This direction should lead me back to the elevators. If I can make it to them with a bit of time to spare, it’ll be left with several layers of metal between it and me—
Behind me, it slams into the wall of the hallway, not even slowing to take the turn. Sounds like a whole hovercraft crashed. Chills run down my neck, panic balling up in my gut.
I’m screwed.
“Bat!” I yell into my comm. “Bat, do you hear me?”
“What happened?”
“There are two of them! The injured one is coming after you, I’ve got another on my tail. Watch out!”
I shut off the comm. Nothing he can say is going to help me, and I’m focusing on running as fast as my artificial body can take. If I trip, I’m dead. Blindly, I toss a shot back over my shoulder, hoping to hit or at least disorientate it. If I turn at all to aim, it’ll slow me down.
Its footsteps don’t falter.
I figured all the humans manning this ship would be in the observation deck or the control room doing their jobs, but a short man wanders around the approaching corner, tablet in his hand, apparently oblivious to the gunshot. He shrieks as I blow past him, taking a page from the ForceZero number and barely slowing on the turn, catching myself hard and practically bouncing off the wall. It hurts, but not as much as getting shot will.
A shower of sparks hits the wall right where I’d been a split second ago. A jolt of surprise shocks my limbs. I keep running.
There. At the end of the hallway is the elevator, doors still open. The human must’ve just come through them. They start closing, and I push my legs until they actually burn, swearing to myself at another set of shots. Even for a killing machine, it’s hard to run and aim. Heat grazes my shoulder, barely registering past all the adrenaline.
The doors get narrower and narrower. Sending a few more shots behind me, I slide in the crack of the door, smacking my shoulder on one of them and slamming hard into the back wall of the elevator, leaving a dent. I punch the lowest button on the elevator—the hangar—aiming a last shot at the number through the crack in the door.
It’s so close a jolt runs through me, but now I can aim I shoot its legs three times before the door closes. If I can’t kill it, at least I can make it faceplant into the ground. I watch it stumble in the last flicker of light.
Thanking everything in the galaxy the emergency power still works on the elevator, I try to catch my breath as it sinks down and down at a solid pace.
“Bat, are you okay?” I ask into the comm, surprised at how much I’m gasping for breath. Panic will do that even to me, I suppose.
“We’re fine. Nearly in the control room. Haven’t seen the other—”
A crash straight above me startles my hand away from the comm, the entire wall of the elevator shaking. An alarm goes off. The elevator comes to a dead stop, in between any of the doors.
Something crashes onto the roof of the elevator like a whole ship was dropped onto it, denting the ceiling even worse than I dented the wall.
No way.
No damn way.
The tip of an electric knife melts through the metal of the ceiling, molten metal dripping down. Swearing, I smash the emergency button on the elevator, but it does nothing.
Well, if that thing can do it, so can I.
Yanking out the panel beneath my feet, I jab my knife into it, slicing open a section. A gap appears above my head, and the muzzle of a gun.
I shoot straight up into it, eliciting a string of oaths as the pistol disappears from view.
Good, it’s human enough to swear.
Slamming my boot into the mutilated paneling—the ceiling must be thicker—I drop down the hole, hissing at the still-hot edge I’m clinging to.
The drop beneath me makes my stomach lurch, a pit of black with no end. But I can see the next door down, maybe twenty feet away. Running not on a cable but rungs along the sides of the walls, the elevator shaft doesn’t give me much to cling to.
I’ll make do. Or be cyborg food.
Finding a handhold on the underside of the elevator and thanking the stars my hands are healed up, I swing into the void. Stomping echoes above me as the number tries to break down the ceiling.
“Aaron, are you okay?” Lee’s voice crackles into my comm.
No, I think, but don’t have the free hands or the time to be answering.
The tracks along the side of the wall are slick but better than nothing. I dig my fingers into the metal, brace my boots against the sides, and slide down hand over hand. Even my grip wants to give out. A human would have a hell of a time if they could do it at all.
Finally, my toes hit the empty space of the top of the next door down. I drop onto the inches-wide ledge of the door, prying it open. Luckily, these aren’t locked, and it doesn’t require me tearing the skin off any fingers to drag the thing open.
Pausing in the gap of the doorway, I look up as the number finally drops down into the elevator, the heel of its boot appearing over the edge of the hole I escaped from. I look up at the latches on the elevator tracks. Only the closest one is visible, but it might be enough.
Aiming as best I can in the pitch black, I place a dozen quick shots into the latch. A few wouldn’t do much, but so many at once gets hot. Really hot.
The metal begins to melt. Something I’d consider rather important snaps, the whole contraption leaning to the side.
As the number stomps both feet on the hole, trying to widen it enough it can fit its broader shoulders through, the other latch—the one I can’t see—gives out under the weight and all the damage done to the structure of the box itself. The cyborg pauses.
Sorry about your elevator, Lee.
I shove myself back through the gap in the door in time for the elevator to drop past me at full speed, wind blasting my face. As soon as I’m free of the door, it slams shut behind me.
Crawling back a few steps, I check the new hallway behind me. Empty.
“Damn.” I flop onto the shiny floor, the cold seeping into my back.
My pulse pounds behind my ears. In the tips of my fingers and where my head presses against the floor.
Amerov can go right to hell. Captain along with it.
“Bat, you good?” I ask into the comm.
“We’re okay! Lee tried to get you and couldn’t.”
“Yeah, I was kinda demolishing his elevator.”
“Is that the crash we heard?”
“Probably. Where are you?”
“Control room.”
“That won’t keep the number out. This one slammed right through the secondary elevator doors.” I heave myself to my feet, hot all over from leftover panic, jogging down the hallway at a pace most humans would consider a run. “How we doing on that big gun?”
To be completely honest, I’m not even certain the fall through that elevator shaft is going to kill that thing. Slow it down, sure. Buy me time, certainly. But I’m done underestimating these things. I’ve survived ship crashes I shouldn’t, and I’m an old model. A normal old model. These things are built to never die.
“I’ve got it,” Lee’s voice joins the comm. “You just about gave me a heart attack not answering like that, idiot.”
Well, I guess he cares, I think dryly.
Bat says, “Gonna be honest, I like your old captain a lot more now that he’s putting together a miniature rocket.”
I giggle a little, then take a breath. Definitely slaphappy. Get a grip, Aaron, you’re not dead yet.
“Aaron, what do you need us to do?” Zane asks, joining in.
His voice is so unconventionally serious it knocks some sense into me. I try to think, but my brain is still going in circles, thoughts going in and out of my grasp too quick to catch. I need to calm down.
“I’m not sure. Lee, can you get some sort of heat signature on the one chasing you? I’m not sure they have heat signatures, but give it a try. I’m not sure I can get to you if it’s between you and me.”
Lee says, “On it.”
I hear voices in the background of the comm. Right, he probably has most of his crew in the command room with him. What does Kel think of this whole situation? Who cares.
“What are you going to do?” Zane asks.
“Not sure. Hangar, I think. We know the guns on our ships can take it down, so if it comes after me, that’ll do it. If you see it, blow it the hell up.”
“Right.”
“Be careful, Aaron,” Yvonne’s voice makes me jump. I didn’t know she was listening.
“Unmatched reflexes, remember,” I say, just as I had when we were on Falla. A soft laugh comes from the other end.
Pushing my burning legs back into a run, I head for the hangar.
This direction should lead me back to the elevators. If I can make it to them with a bit of time to spare, it’ll be left with several layers of metal between it and me—
Behind me, it slams into the wall of the hallway, not even slowing to take the turn. Sounds like a whole hovercraft crashed. Chills run down my neck, panic balling up in my gut.
I’m screwed.
“Bat!” I yell into my comm. “Bat, do you hear me?”
“What happened?”
“There are two of them! The injured one is coming after you, I’ve got another on my tail. Watch out!”
I shut off the comm. Nothing he can say is going to help me, and I’m focusing on running as fast as my artificial body can take. If I trip, I’m dead. Blindly, I toss a shot back over my shoulder, hoping to hit or at least disorientate it. If I turn at all to aim, it’ll slow me down.
Its footsteps don’t falter.
I figured all the humans manning this ship would be in the observation deck or the control room doing their jobs, but a short man wanders around the approaching corner, tablet in his hand, apparently oblivious to the gunshot. He shrieks as I blow past him, taking a page from the ForceZero number and barely slowing on the turn, catching myself hard and practically bouncing off the wall. It hurts, but not as much as getting shot will.
A shower of sparks hits the wall right where I’d been a split second ago. A jolt of surprise shocks my limbs. I keep running.
There. At the end of the hallway is the elevator, doors still open. The human must’ve just come through them. They start closing, and I push my legs until they actually burn, swearing to myself at another set of shots. Even for a killing machine, it’s hard to run and aim. Heat grazes my shoulder, barely registering past all the adrenaline.
The doors get narrower and narrower. Sending a few more shots behind me, I slide in the crack of the door, smacking my shoulder on one of them and slamming hard into the back wall of the elevator, leaving a dent. I punch the lowest button on the elevator—the hangar—aiming a last shot at the number through the crack in the door.
It’s so close a jolt runs through me, but now I can aim I shoot its legs three times before the door closes. If I can’t kill it, at least I can make it faceplant into the ground. I watch it stumble in the last flicker of light.
Thanking everything in the galaxy the emergency power still works on the elevator, I try to catch my breath as it sinks down and down at a solid pace.
“Bat, are you okay?” I ask into the comm, surprised at how much I’m gasping for breath. Panic will do that even to me, I suppose.
“We’re fine. Nearly in the control room. Haven’t seen the other—”
A crash straight above me startles my hand away from the comm, the entire wall of the elevator shaking. An alarm goes off. The elevator comes to a dead stop, in between any of the doors.
Something crashes onto the roof of the elevator like a whole ship was dropped onto it, denting the ceiling even worse than I dented the wall.
No way.
No damn way.
The tip of an electric knife melts through the metal of the ceiling, molten metal dripping down. Swearing, I smash the emergency button on the elevator, but it does nothing.
Well, if that thing can do it, so can I.
Yanking out the panel beneath my feet, I jab my knife into it, slicing open a section. A gap appears above my head, and the muzzle of a gun.
I shoot straight up into it, eliciting a string of oaths as the pistol disappears from view.
Good, it’s human enough to swear.
Slamming my boot into the mutilated paneling—the ceiling must be thicker—I drop down the hole, hissing at the still-hot edge I’m clinging to.
The drop beneath me makes my stomach lurch, a pit of black with no end. But I can see the next door down, maybe twenty feet away. Running not on a cable but rungs along the sides of the walls, the elevator shaft doesn’t give me much to cling to.
I’ll make do. Or be cyborg food.
Finding a handhold on the underside of the elevator and thanking the stars my hands are healed up, I swing into the void. Stomping echoes above me as the number tries to break down the ceiling.
“Aaron, are you okay?” Lee’s voice crackles into my comm.
No, I think, but don’t have the free hands or the time to be answering.
The tracks along the side of the wall are slick but better than nothing. I dig my fingers into the metal, brace my boots against the sides, and slide down hand over hand. Even my grip wants to give out. A human would have a hell of a time if they could do it at all.
Finally, my toes hit the empty space of the top of the next door down. I drop onto the inches-wide ledge of the door, prying it open. Luckily, these aren’t locked, and it doesn’t require me tearing the skin off any fingers to drag the thing open.
Pausing in the gap of the doorway, I look up as the number finally drops down into the elevator, the heel of its boot appearing over the edge of the hole I escaped from. I look up at the latches on the elevator tracks. Only the closest one is visible, but it might be enough.
Aiming as best I can in the pitch black, I place a dozen quick shots into the latch. A few wouldn’t do much, but so many at once gets hot. Really hot.
The metal begins to melt. Something I’d consider rather important snaps, the whole contraption leaning to the side.
As the number stomps both feet on the hole, trying to widen it enough it can fit its broader shoulders through, the other latch—the one I can’t see—gives out under the weight and all the damage done to the structure of the box itself. The cyborg pauses.
Sorry about your elevator, Lee.
I shove myself back through the gap in the door in time for the elevator to drop past me at full speed, wind blasting my face. As soon as I’m free of the door, it slams shut behind me.
Crawling back a few steps, I check the new hallway behind me. Empty.
“Damn.” I flop onto the shiny floor, the cold seeping into my back.
My pulse pounds behind my ears. In the tips of my fingers and where my head presses against the floor.
Amerov can go right to hell. Captain along with it.
“Bat, you good?” I ask into the comm.
“We’re okay! Lee tried to get you and couldn’t.”
“Yeah, I was kinda demolishing his elevator.”
“Is that the crash we heard?”
“Probably. Where are you?”
“Control room.”
“That won’t keep the number out. This one slammed right through the secondary elevator doors.” I heave myself to my feet, hot all over from leftover panic, jogging down the hallway at a pace most humans would consider a run. “How we doing on that big gun?”
To be completely honest, I’m not even certain the fall through that elevator shaft is going to kill that thing. Slow it down, sure. Buy me time, certainly. But I’m done underestimating these things. I’ve survived ship crashes I shouldn’t, and I’m an old model. A normal old model. These things are built to never die.
“I’ve got it,” Lee’s voice joins the comm. “You just about gave me a heart attack not answering like that, idiot.”
Well, I guess he cares, I think dryly.
Bat says, “Gonna be honest, I like your old captain a lot more now that he’s putting together a miniature rocket.”
I giggle a little, then take a breath. Definitely slaphappy. Get a grip, Aaron, you’re not dead yet.
“Aaron, what do you need us to do?” Zane asks, joining in.
His voice is so unconventionally serious it knocks some sense into me. I try to think, but my brain is still going in circles, thoughts going in and out of my grasp too quick to catch. I need to calm down.
“I’m not sure. Lee, can you get some sort of heat signature on the one chasing you? I’m not sure they have heat signatures, but give it a try. I’m not sure I can get to you if it’s between you and me.”
Lee says, “On it.”
I hear voices in the background of the comm. Right, he probably has most of his crew in the command room with him. What does Kel think of this whole situation? Who cares.
“What are you going to do?” Zane asks.
“Not sure. Hangar, I think. We know the guns on our ships can take it down, so if it comes after me, that’ll do it. If you see it, blow it the hell up.”
“Right.”
“Be careful, Aaron,” Yvonne’s voice makes me jump. I didn’t know she was listening.
“Unmatched reflexes, remember,” I say, just as I had when we were on Falla. A soft laugh comes from the other end.
Pushing my burning legs back into a run, I head for the hangar.
